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> Happiness is a prerequisite to the jhanas. > > -- Rob Burbea The jhanas are a series of eight, discrete states of experience that are described as extremely happy, pleasurable, and calm. They are accessible through specific meditation practices and are non-addictive. You may have heard of them from Buddhism or Scott Alexander. I have spent a year practicing jhana meditation and have experienced zero of them. Here are some of my reflections. Generate a positive feeling > "Good luck at school, Harry. Do you think I bought you enough books?" > > "You can never have enough books... but you certainly tried, it was a really, really, really good try..." > > It had brought tears to his eyes, the first time Harry had remembered and tried to put it into the spell. > > Harry brought the wand up and around and brandished it, a gesture that didn't have to be precise, only bold and defiant. > > "Expecto Patronum!" cried Harry. > > Nothing happened. > > Not a single flicker of light. > > -- Chapter 43: Humanism, Pt 1, HPMOR Jhourney is a startup that teaches the jhanas in a one-week retreat. I attended a Jhourney retreat in 2024. Briefly, the meditation technique we used can be summed up as: 1. Generate a positive feeling using some mental object X. 2. Collect your attention around where it is felt in the body. 3. Gently refresh X whenever it fades. For the object X, it can be anything. Common ones were lovingkindness phrases (e.g. "May you be well, may you be free from suffering"), literally smiling, or a happy memory[1]. We meditated for 6-10 hours a day during the retreat, with each sit ranging between 30 to 90 minutes. Most of them were self-directed, some were guided, and some were done in pairs. For step 2, there was a particular emphasis, that we were not just paying attention to random pleasant physical sensations in the body, but that positive feelings have physical sensations associated with them (or, worded differently, positive feelings are MADE of